


Just a Text Away

by Ranowa



Series: I'm coming home, John. -SH [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Sherlock Holmes, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, John is a Mess, Post-Reichenbach, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Sherlock is a Mess, Substance Abuse, Violence, in which i absolutely tear sherlock and john apart, sherlock's two years Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 02:13:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20250484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranowa/pseuds/Ranowa
Summary: In the two years after Sherlock throws himself off the roof of St. Bart's, crunches into the pavement below, and dies in John's arms, John starts texting.He doesn't know that his text messages are being read.





	Just a Text Away

**Author's Note:**

> Guess I'm back for more, huh? 
> 
> I guess the only note this really needs is that while these are all texts (mostly John's), they're written more like emails. Mostly because I can barely text to save my life, and didn't really want to try and translate Emotions through Textspeak. Also canon didn't give me enough angst for two years of self-destructive Sherlock being completely alone and tortured and Everything, so- here we go :)
> 
> Also, this is definitely not Brit-picked. Mea culpa. However, it IS Spanish-picked! Just a few lines; translated by the wonderful Izilen on Ao3!

**September 20 2012**

When Sherlock gets the first message, huddled in a corner in an abandoned warehouse in Germany, he's so stunned that he chokes on his ice-cold, vending-machine muffin.

In it, is everything. An entire world that is just two years at Baker Street, a world that has thrown him off a rooftop and lost him in now eastern Europe, fighting tooth and nail to get it back.

It is also short, succinct, to the point.

**John Watson: **I hate you, Sherlock.

It is everything, because it is the _end _of everything.

* * *

**September 21 2012**

The next day, when Sherlock is in the middle of a threeway between cleaning his rifle, vividly imagining all the many ways he could throttle Mycroft's little neck, and aggressively chain-smoking, his phone vibrates again.

**John Watson: **I'm sorry. I don't hate you, Sherlock. I needed to say it, I thought it'd make me feel better, but I've felt sick since I sent it and I know no one even read it. I don't hate you.

Sherlock doesn't understand.

He doesn't understand a lot, really.

But, even he can understand that the message means the most, most important thing of all: _John doesn't _<strike>_hate you_</strike>_ know, _and after that, Sherlock throws the rest of the cigarettes away.

Then he doubles back, grabs a handful again, and stashes them back in his coat.

* * *

It takes two months, for John to text him.

Sherlock's only been in Germany for just the one, now. The month before it, spent hitchhiking across western Europe to get here. Brushing up on his accents, his dialects; keeping his head down, despising Mycroft's very existence as he shivers outside smokey pubs while knowing his brother is warm and ensconced and secure in his ostentatious home back in London. Sometimes he'll catch a bit of radio or news from the UK, the nation captivated by the Rise of the Genius Detective Sherlock Holmes and the Fall of the Fraud, and Sherlock smirks into his drink every time.

"Guess people really aren't who they say they are," a French cargo driver grouses to him about it, driving him past Paris for several hundred euro, and Sherlock hasn't slept in seventy-two hours, so he cracks up and can't stop for two minutes.

Germany is stop one. Germany is stop one, because Germany will be the easiest. It's the loosest of Moriarty's webs, the operatives here the messiest, their operations the simplest, and Mycroft has a friend willing to support him with envelopes of money and a car left on the side of the road with an address in the glove compartment. Baby steps, Mycroft says.

None of the others will be this easy.

But that is how John's first text finds him: one month into Germany and two months away from Baker Street, his head shaved and his coat gone and the name Sherlock Holmes just starting to fade from the headlines, sitting on the floor with three bullets spent, an arson to his nonexistent name, and five foreign operatives left delivered to the government's metaphorical doorstep. And then John texts him, _that, _and he spends the rest of the night breathing in, breathing out, repeating to himself, _it's okay. _He doesn't know how John's found out he's alive, what the _fuck _Mycroft has done, but what's done is done, and it's too late to matter. What matters is this: the mission has never been about John's friendship. John can hate him for the rest of their lives, and Mrs. Hudson can evict him, and Lestrade can throw him out of every last crime scene, and it's immaterial, because they'll be _alive. _

He repeats it so stringently, he believes it.

Sentiment's a defect found only in the losing side, after all.

And then, that second message comes, and fifteen hours later, it feels like the world that had just dropped out from underneath him has smashed back on his head, and he's too busy bleeding to feel it hurt.

* * *

**October 02 2012**

Sherlock burns the rest of the German terror cell. Sometimes, literally.

Mycroft has a black chess pawn left for him the day after the last domino falls. Sherlock swipes it from where it rolls on the pavement, just outside his current safehouse, letting it spill across his palm. Cheeky. "Italy next, then," he murmurs, and tosses it back to the sky. "You certainly did get around, Moriarty."

The third texts come well after he's cleared out, and has secreted himself as a stowaway on a truck delivering something that smells ruddy awful, but is headed south.

**John Watson: **You cock. You utter fucking cock.

**John Watson: **I can't sleep. It's four in the morning and I can't sleep, Sherlock. I haven't slept in days and it's your fucking fault.

**John Watson: **Every time I close my eyes I see you falling. JUMPING, Sherlock, you arsehole, you bloody fucking arsehole, leave it to fucking you, I've seen so many people die but what the fuck is wrong with you, Sherlock, how could you call me and look me in the eye and say goodbye? You stupid, heartless, cold machine, I want to punch you in your dammed smug face

**John Watson: **Come back. Sherlock, come back. Please. Please don't do this. I can't do this. Sherlock please.

**John Watson: **Sherlock I'm sorry

And-

Well, the messages pretty much continue on just like that.

Sleep-deprived, Sherlock's mind provides. He's typing on his laptop, not his phone. Too stream of consciousness, too much punctuation. He's upset. He's given up trying to sleep.

Sherlock buries his nose back in his sleeve, hunching in the dark, and focuses on the rumble of the rough road.

* * *

He doesn't like Italy.

Takes him ages, to hitchhike his way to the very south of the country. Will take him ages to hitchhike his way back. Every second of the journey is spent in very acute awareness that Mycroft could've helicoptered him into location in two hours flat, and every other second of the journey is spent imagining the smarmy look on his brother's face as he reminds him _there are no luxury helicopter rides on clandestine missions, brother mine._

He doesn't like Italy.

It reminds him of Angelo's, even if in place of pasta he's eating a loaf of stale bread he stole from the nearest supermarket.

Spends more of his time <strike>falling down drunk</strike> tipsy than not, because <strike>why the hell not </strike>it's easier to get wine than it is water.

John texts him three times before he finds Moriarty's web. Sherlock still, functionally, does not understand why.

He thinks he wants to reply, but quite honestly, that was probably the alcohol talking.

* * *

**October 17 2012**

**John Watson: **Hey Sherlock fuck YOU

**John Watson: **I'M NOT DRUNK FUCK YOU

**John Watson: **Why'd you jump, Sherlock, why the hell did you jup

**John Watson: **I would've helpd you no matter what, Sherlock, yu know that don't you

**John Watson: **You're my friend

**John Watson: **Except you're not anymore, are you? You're dead. yo died in my arms because you'er a piece of shit who woudnt fucking LISTEN

**John Watson: **Sherlock I'm sorry

**John Watson: **I should've stopped

**John Watson: **You

**John Watson: **Sherlock I'm so sorry

**John Watson: **Please come back please let me try again

**John Watson: **I'll get it right this time I swear

**John Watson: **Just don't jump

**John Watson: **Just stop being dead please

**John Watson: **Please

**John Watson: **Sherlock I love you

**John Watson: **I miss you so much Sherlock, can you believe that, you're such a ruddy arsehole but I miss you, I actually miss you bitching about milk and blowng up the kitchen and playing your violin at fuck all in the morning

**John Watson: **you were thew rost flatmate in the entire world and I would ive anything to have you back, to have you just being Sherlock and see you happpy and Sherlock again

**John Watson: **goddammint Sherlock HOW COULD YOU

**John Watson: **YOU DIED SHERLOCK

**John Watson: **COME BACK

**John Watson: **PLEASE

**John Watson: **I can't do this alone Sherlock I'm so sorry I'm so sorry why didn't you talk to me I could've helped I would've stopped you

**John Watson: **I would've protected you I would've done whatever you needed as long as you lived

**John Watson: **Sherlock please come back please I'm so sorry I'm so fucking sorry Sherlock please

**John Watson: **YOU JUMPED HOW COULD YOU

**John Watson: **I SAW YOU DIE

**John Watson: **I HEARD YOUR SKULL BREAK

**John Watson: **AND YOUR SPINE SNAP

**John Watson: **I HEARD I T SHERLOCK

**John Watson: **YOU FUCKING DIED WHY DIDN'T YOU TRUST ME I COULD'VE SAVED YOU

**John Watson: **SHERLCOK HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME YOU WER MY E BEST FIRNED AND YOU DIED

**John Watson: **YOU KILLED YOURSELF SHERLOOCK

**John Watson: **COME BACK

**John Watson: **I'M SO SORRY COME BACK

* * *

**October 20 2012**

Sherlock has his first real mis-step after he's dismantled the cell in Italy, and stows away again on a cargo ferry to Egypt.

He's got black hair, now. Sunburnt instead of tan, his face a glowing red and his hands blistering underneath his new dress as an imam, as he whispers on board in the dead of night, hiding himself in a cargo of textiles with enough food and water to last him for two weeks. Midway through, the ship is grounded due to storms- _stupid, stupid Sherlock, stupid-_ and his food runs out three days before his water.

It's the stupidest thing he's done since he hadn't shot Moriarty in the head that night at the pool.

For a moment, just a moment, his whole plan almost ends right then and there.

He's too dehydrated to remember the difference between Arabic and Italian, takes him three tries to swipe the keys from the sailor he's knocked out because he can't _see, _and approximately half his brain is screaming for him to dunk face first into the Mediterranean. Despite it 1) being salt-water 2) in plain view of the entire harbor 3) is liable to drown him and absolutely nothing else.

He doesn't die, then. It takes more to kill him than a fall from a hospital roof, and it'll take more to kill him than this.

Not as long as John needs to be kept safe.

He doesn't die.

Sherlock ends up limp and helpless of a very old contact's very illegal coastal warehouse, cold cloths on his face that scald his skin and an IV of fluids stuck to his arm, and feeling as dreadfully stupid as Mycroft's little brother.

He wakes up remembering Moriarty's psychotic laugh, hot and sweaty and wrung out halfway to death, and staring at the face of his old partner from graduate school.

Honestly, he really, really, really does not remember his name.

Really, really, really does not care.

"Good morning, Shirley," old-partner-from-graduate-school says, and, oh, yes, _that's _why Sherlock hasn't spoken to him in seven years. "Sleep well?"

"Shut up."

"You would've died if that nosy brother of yours hadn't texted me, you know." He kicks his feet up; Sherlock's hot, fuzzy world continues to tilt. "I hope you'll make this worth my while."

Sherlock has no intention of making this worth his while. His only intention is to tell Mycroft to stick his fat fingers back where the sun don't shine, and burn every bridge he has with every last rat that calls him _Shirley, _and get to work so he can get out of this godforsaken country <strike>and back home.</strike>

It's been three weeks since he's checked his phone.

* * *

**November 19 2013**

Egypt is easier than Italy. Moriarty's network is bolder, here, more entrenched in the corruption of local politics, and Sherlock is far enough away from the UK that no one looks twice. Edward, the partner from graduate school, is just so _insistent _on helping that it's more trouble to say no than it is to allow it, and he accepts a hit of cocaine from him just because it's more trouble to not. He gains back half the weight he's lost, sends a bullet through the head of the terrorist cell's leader that he could've just as easily sent towards the Hague for the ICC, and even spends one day at the beach, flipping Mycroft off and enjoying a god-dammed sangria.

It's not London.

God, it's not London.

Sherlock spends four weeks in Egypt. By the time he's ready to leave, he's been burned as thoroughly as a boiled lobster, has decided he hates desert countries, and has now taken Moriarty's _I'll burn the heart out of you _somewhat literally. If the sun burns any brighter, he really thinks that it will.

Mycroft's promised a cargo plane to ferry him to Israel, probably because of the disaster that had happened in the Mediterranean, and even if it chafes and irritates and burns, it means he's not hitchhiking on a fucking camel for a month, so he'll take it.

Would've even been something approaching happy, if partner-from-graduate-school hadn't insisted upon driving him to the airfield.

"It's been so exciting, having you here, Shirley." It's almost an obscene purr, Sherlock just functionally does not understand that then fondles his shoulder: as clumsy as it is unwelcome. "Are you sure you have to run off again so quickly?"

Sherlock wishes for another cigarette.

"As far as you're concerned, I was never here." He taps two fingers to his watch, scowling to the darkness. Where the bloody hell is Mycroft. "No one will believe you if you say that I was in the first place."

"Yeah, yeah- that business you got up to back home, right? Should've known it was all fake; you'd never go, not like that." He continues his _touching, _this time at his hair, and Sherlock switches his plan of disguise to shave it off again at the first opportunity. "So you're running off again, then? Back to your boyfriend?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your _boyfriend," _he repeats, and takes Sherlock's phone, because Sherlock lets him. "Your phone's been going off non-stop... _I miss you, Sherlock. I'm sorry, Sherlock. Sherlock, please come back, I can't do this. Sherlock, I miss you. Sherlock, I love you, I'm so sorry..."_

Sherlock has killed four men in four weeks, and there is a distinct possibility that that number might just become five.

"-come on, Shirley, admit it- you're skittering back home to see your-"

"-boyfriend, yes."

Edward splutters straight into stunned silence, and Sherlock, careful and secure, smiles.

It is a flat, matter-of-fact, unquestionable lie.

And Sherlock turns, then, to the abruptly silenced moron with his most practiced smile that he's been told is his most chilling, and leans in, close and warm, bringing his face to his as intimately as a lover's. "Because unlike some of us, Edward, I'm secure enough in my masculinity to have interest in another man without feminizing him to the point of pretending what's in his pants-" he licks at his ear, and then, he _bites, _"_Edeline."_

He breaks the bones of his wrist straight out of alignment, and then, as he gasps and spasms and chokes, takes the two fingers holding his phone and breaks those, too.

* * *

**Agent Lazarus: **Ty for the ride.

**Handler Viper: **Please. It is for my own convenience, not your own.

**Agent Lazarus: **You're free to contact the Egyptian authorities now. Edward is of no further use to us.

**Agent Lazarus: **[img_SmugglingEvidence_1.3]

**Agent Lazarus: **[img_PossessionEvidence_1.5]

**Agent Lazarus: **[pdf_bookkeeping_2.0]

(Mycroft doesn't reply after that. Mycroft doesn't text _if you're back on cocaine the Egyptian authorities are the least he has to worry about. _Mycroft doesn't say _Sherlock Holmes, get that needle out of your arm before I break it off myself, brother mine.)_

Mycroft de-routes a plane for him instead, and Sherlock leaves Edward Holland screeching and wailing like a toddler as he hops to the tarmac, and tosses the burner phone into the nearest roaring turbine.

His old phone, the one with a number that's resting in a dead man's name with a dead man's number, vibrates again in his pocket.

* * *

**(October 15, 2012)**

**John Watson: **I can't stand this, Sherlock. It feels like I'm crawling out of my skin. Everyone feels bad for me, everyone's always staring, whispering behind my back, and I just, I can't do it. COME BACK, Sherlock. Prove them all wrong, be the bloody genius that you are, make them eat their words and put on the damn hat. Sherlock please.

**John Watson: **COME BACK SHERLOCK

**(October 17, 2012)**

**John Watson: **You're out there somewhere, aren't you? You have to be, of course you are. You're Sherlock Holmes, you wouldn't fucking. I can't type it, Sherlock, I can't say it, I can't even type it. It's pathetic, isn't it? Sentiment, whatever you'd call it. Oh, god. God I can't do this. I can't do this.

**John Watson: **You would never kill yourself.

**John Watson: **THERE. I SAID IT. I FUCKING SAID IT, SHERLOCK.

**John Watson: **But I'm right, aren't I? You don't give a single flying fuck about your reputation, you could not care less about it if you tried, and you expect me to believe you hauled off over a roof just because some bloody morons like Sally Donovan think you're a fraud? You think I believe that, Sherlock? Fuck you, Sherlock Holmes, you liar, you liar, you liar

**(October 20, 2012)**

**John Watson: **You liar, how dare you do this, Sherlock, I should punch you in your stupid smug face, I WILL the next time I see you again, do you understand? I'll cut myself on your stupid sharp cheekbones if you want, you better be ready, I swear to god, Sherlock, you doing this to me

**John Watson: **FUCK YOU, SHERLOCK HOLMES

(...)

* * *

The messages continue, until Sherlock wants to up-chuck into the nearest cargo crate.

John is drunk again. John is upset again. John has correctly deduced that he is alive- good, clever John. John is angry.

Oh, John is very, very angry.

Sherlock wishes for another hit of cocaine.

* * *

**(October 20, 2012)**

**DI Lestrade: **Hey.

**DI Lestrade: **Sorry, this is awkward. But. Oh, sod off.

**DI Lestrade: **I don't know how to say this.

**(October 21, 2012)**

**DI Lestrade: **He really misses you, Sherlock.

* * *

**November 19 2012**

Sherlock parachutes into Israel. He breaks an ankle on landing- it's his first time jumping out of a plane- and tells himself quite firmly that the reason he's throwing up is because of the ridiculous adrenaline rush of his first sky-dive.

Truly, he can't see any other reason for it.

Or, perhaps it's a new aversion to heights, an irrational phobia from his somewhat recent dive off of St. Bart's roof; the solid _crack _of his ankle that resonates in his head and fees like John's hand as he scrabbles for the pulse that he's not going to feel. Perhaps it's the withdrawal; perhaps it is simply physical pain, perhaps-

It has _nothing _to do with the phone still settled in his coat pockets, several dozen messages left unread, because Sherlock has never experienced a physical reaction to text messages before and without John here to ask, it's the only solution that his brain understands.

Why does John miss him?

Why is John hurt when he's the one that fell?

<strike>Sherlock saw the look on his face when he fell. He doesn't understand, but he's staring to know.</strike>

* * *

Israel is. Passable.

That's the best word for it.

He crashes in the basement of an office building, his ankle carefully set, splinted, and propped up on a set of printer manuals, arranged the way Molly Hooper had chided was necessary from his mind palace, and even is sure to stay hydrated, because mind palace John suggests that, too.

He has a mind palace John, now.

That's interesting.

Sherlock lays himself up because he knows what happens if he doesn't. His ankle will heal in a way that clicks when he walks, that aches when he runs, that drives a limp down from his hip if he stands for too long. A limp and an ankle that clicks is simply not on, for a jaunt around the world couch-crashing and terrorist-fighting, and this time, there won't be a Mycroft around to bully him into a specialist's office to fix the damage he was too lazy to prevent.

He just needs John to remind him of it, whenever his patience snaps on the edge to leave the frayed ends sparking like a live wire, and the weeks of forced inaction made a hundred hornets scream in the insides of his own head.

_(Come on, Sherlock. If you behave now, I won't even complain next time I find a severed head in the fridge. Come on, Sherlock. Doctor's orders; if you don't follow them then I won't help you up when you fall. _

_Why did you fall, Sherlock?_

_SHERLOCK.)_

* * *

**November 23 2013**

**John Watson: **I got a new therapist. She told me to keep texting you, Sherlock. Suggested I was bottling it all up, before, which is why I got drunk and. Yeah, you know. I deleted the messages, I can't read them, I don't even really remember them, but you know.

**John Watson: **Um, if this is someone else's number, please say so and I'll stop. I'm really sorry if I'm bothering anyone. This is the number for an old friend, used to be his number, and I guess someday it's going to go someone else's, right? He's... not around anymore. Seriously, if someone's reading this, please just say so.

(Sherlock's thumb brushes the reply button. There is a peculiar, unpleasant twist in his chest, like he's just been punched breathless, but there was no punch.

He lowers his thumb.)

**John Watson: **So, now that that's out of the way, time for my weekly homework assignment, I guess. Right, then.

**John Watson: **I guess if I have to choose one thing to say to you, it's that I'm sorry, Sherlock. I'm sorry you felt like jumping was your only choice.

**John Watson: **Okay, reading that back, it sounds sarcastic, but I promise for once it's not. I'm so sorry you felt like that. It hurts that my best friend felt that badly and that I couldn't do anything to help you. I'm sorry.

(That's the therapist's words, not John's. It sounds like a psychology textbook on survivor guilt and suicide. He knows it does, because he knows it as surely as he breathes, can hear it in the air from several thousand miles away, that John is not sorry. John is and will always be _angry.)_

_I'm sorry, Sherlock, _John texts, and even if Sherlock could text back, there are not enough words in all the world's dictionaries for him to say _but I'm the one who's sorry._

* * *

**November 25 2012**

**Handler Viper: **Why is Mossad taking an interest in James Moriarty at the same time as your presence in their country?

**Agent Lazarus: **Because Moriarty's men have ties to Nazis. What is it that you're not getting here?

**Handler Viper: **You're not meant to be enlisting Mossad to do your legwork for you. You are meant to be lying low.

**Agent Lazarus: **And I am. See?

**Agent Lazarus: **[img_BrokeMyFuckingAnkle_1.4]

**Handler Viper: **Lazarus.

**Agent Lazarus: **Why is he texting a dead man?

**Handler Viper: **Denial is the first stage of grief, I'm told. Sentiment?

**Agent Lazarus: **And why am I still receiving messages to my old number?

**Handler Viper: **Would you like me to stop forwarding them?

(...)

**Handler Viper: **Goodnight, Lazarus.

* * *

**December 20 2012**

Sherlock leaves Israel with Moriarty's Israeli web summarily executed, one by one, bullets for once not from his own gun, and with a new warrant out for a certain unknown hacker's arrest. He can just hear Mycroft's exasperation, but Sherlock is running on two hours a night for five dozen nights, so he thins his mouth instead of laughing because if he starts laughing, he knows he won't stop.

He heads towards Afghanistan, and tries to stop seeing blood on his hands when he closes his eyes.

* * *

**December 21 2012**

**John Watson: **I can't sleep. Pretty sure I already told you that before, but I'm saying it again. I can't sleep. I can't get it out of my head. I'm going to go mad, or maybe I already am, I don't know.

**John Watson: **This is worse than every dream I've ever had about Afghanistan because I know you chose to do it. I've seen so many people die, and believe it or not a lot of them were worse off than you, but this makes me sick because it's you and because I know you made the choice to do it.

**John Watson: **I still don't understand WHY you did but I guess it doesn't matter now, does it.

**John Watson: **I hope you're resting well, wherever you are. Night, Sherlock.

* * *

**December 24 2012**

Sherlock gets shot in a back alley, and decides he misses western Europe and its gun laws.

It's actually his first time, being shot. He'd known it'd have to happen eventually, of course- just balance of probability. Given how often he finds himself staring down the barrel of a gun. All things considered, he's actually rather glad it's happened here, where he can lick his wounds himself and not be faced with hospital, with Mycroft's meddling, Lestrade's whining, John's concern. He prefers it, this way.

This is, of course, what he tells himself the morning after.

Sherlock is shot midway through a robbery, select and precious files secreted away under his arm and adrenaline pumping through his veins, secreting away every scrap of inconsequential pain. And his mind determines the wound inconsequential, so he doesn't even _feel it _when it happens. Yes, it's suddenly a bit harder to lift his arm, and as he's pounding back to his dingy motel room it's suddenly a lot harder to lift his feet, and there's something warm and wet mingled in his fingers, but it wasn't until Sherlock flicked the lights on and faced the mirror that he realized, _that's my blood._

John would've shouted bloody murder at him for it.

It's nothing serious. Bit more than a graze, bit less than life-threatening. Bit Not Good. Warm, bright red slathers down his arm, his sleeve, the bullet torn straight through and out, and he lies back on a square of sticky gauze and breathes through his nose. Desperate, now. Steady, now. Not the time to pass out. Not the time to faint.

"Stitch it," mind palace John chides, "Sherlock, before you lose too much. _Sherlock."_

"I can't stitch one-handed, _John." _

"Yes, you can. I taught you how. Remember?"

Of course Sherlock remembers.

* * *

**Agent Lazarus: **[img_LookMyFirstGSW_1.0]

**Handler Viper: **For god's sake.

**Agent Lazarus: **I'd like a new health insurance plan.

**Handler Viper: **Stop being so dramatic. Or are you showing off?

**Agent Lazarus: **<3

**Handler Viper: **It's Christmas. Take a day off. Or, if you are that lonely, go have a drink.

**Handler Viper: **That needs an extra stitch. Goodnight.

Sherlock hadn't known it was Christmas.

* * *

There's no bottle of wine, carefully wrapped present from Molly Hooper, or violin handy. Sherlock makes do with humming under his breath, the fingers of his left hand miming through a nonexistent violin neck for _We Wish You a Merry Christmas, _and finishes it off with an absolutely obscene and show-offy arpeggio that makes his shoulder _screech_ and his head is as empty as bliss incarnate.

He wants to text Mycroft to text Molly to keep an eye on John, but doesn't quite have the words, and more importantly, really doesn't have the dexterity in his half-numb hand to pull it off anymore. Which was perhaps the whole point.

It's sitting there on that dingy hotel room, humming Christmas songs to himself in the middle of the night, that Sherlock first considers that there might be no coming back.

* * *

**December 30, 2012**

**Dr. Molly Hooper: **I'm taking John on holiday. To Sussex, for three weeks. I hope he likes it.

(John and Molly Hooper? _John _and _Molly Hooper?_)

**Dr. Molly Hooper: **The clinic told him to either take a holiday or not come back at all, and I'm making him choose the first. He still won't tell me what happened, but it sounds like one of his patients brought you up. It's been months, but he still loses it whenever anyone calls you a fake.

(Oh.)

**Dr. Molly Hooper: **Sherlock, if you're reading this, I know you told me there was no other way, but I'm so scared. I've been scared for you and now I'm scared for him, too. PLEASE, Sherlock. He's falling apart, and all I'm doing is pouring salt in the wound. He doesn't need a bloody holiday, he needs the truth.

**Dr. Molly Hooper: **Please, Sherlock.

(Sherlock closes his eyes. Sherlock's thumb touches John's conversation, and his heart races, and he pictures _I'm alive, John. Chin up, steady on. I'm alive._

He sees John say _Sherlock?! _and in the same breath, the same bullet that's just carved a path through his arm splatter a gaping hole in the back of his head.)

Really, though, Sherlock sees John turn his back.

Really, though, Sherlock knows that even if the contracts on John's life were gone, he isn't sure if he could send that message.

* * *

Sherlock spends two months in Afghanistan. There's more than one call that's so close it's fit for his microscope- god, he misses his microscope. But this branch of Moriarty's web falls, and the world is safer for it, even if his trigger finger has gone numb and the sound of gunfire has begun to splatter his vision red.

John texts him every week, on the hour, now.

As his therapist recommended, surely. Always carefully restrained little messages, ones that scream insincerity even if they are nothing but black and white on a screen. As if he's afraid of going further, of doing _more; _doesn't want to open his mouth because he's afraid of what will come out if he does.

Sherlock doesn't even pretend to understand why.

But those messages make it feel like he's being suffocated.

Each and every one, just a little bit more; a noose pulled around his neck and a straitjacket about his chest, and every time his phone vibrates and he reads _Work was tedious today, Sherlock. Three patients with thrush. _or _Met up with Greg for drinks. He still barely knows how to talk to me. _or _My shoulder hurts today, _Sherlock's breaths waste away until there's no air left in him at all.

He takes to using heroin, to get through it. He tells himself it's for the pain in his arm, and maybe the first hit was, a little, but by the dozenth needle the wound is just a scar, yet inside Sherlock still feels like one giant, raw, exposed nerve, being flayed with every text.

His plan for his next stop forms the day that he sneaks a ride out of Kabul, and John texts him again.

**John Watson: **God, I forgot. I can't believe I forgot. Fuck. I'm so sorry. Sorry, this is going to come out a little strange, but I remembered at the clinic this bloody morning and this message has been being written in my head since.

**John Watson: **Sherlock, I'm sorry.

**John Watson: **The day you died, I called you a machine. When you didn't want to go see Mrs. Hudson, I called you a machine, and I'm sorry for that, Sherlock. You're not. God, you're not.

**John Watson: **I know it's silly, or you'd say it's silly, at least. Because it went according to your plan. You needed me out of the way, you faked the report of Mrs. Hudson being shot, and you needed me pissed at you to get me out of there for as long as you could. Hell, you probably knew the exact words I'd use, didn't you? I used to think that my saying that upset you, that it was one of the reasons you jumped, but that's not it, is it? It was all according to your plan. You didn't care what I'd said at all. Well, I do care, Sherlock.

**John Watson: **I'm sorry.

**John Watson: **There, I said it. And I'm going to say something else. Sherlock, it's not bloody right that you could just PLAN on your best friend saying something that awful to you. I fucking hate that you were right about me, that I didn't just say that but you KNEW that I would, but it's not okay and even if you don't care, I'm so sorry. I meant what I said to your grave. You are the best man and most human,human being that I've ever met. You're not a machine, and I'll never make the mistake of saying something like that to you again, no matter what dammed bullshit you try and pull.

**John Watson: **I'm aware I'm speaking in present tense. Shut the hell up.

* * *

**March 01, 2013**

It's so easy, Sherlock could've done it high.

(He did do it high.)

He scopes out his next target, everything planned as securely as need be. Then he scopes out what will be his safe-house, when the time comes. Gathers the necessary rations, medical supplies, the electronics that he'll need.

He tucks his new burner phone into safekeeping, wedged between a fallen scrap of debris and the wall.

His old phone, though.

_John's _phone.

This, he makes a little home for, tucking it into hiding underneath a sheet of plastic and wedging it into place with two rocks from outside. Sentiment, foolish sentiment is what it is, but he'll let himself indulge, for the night. He turns it off, knowing it'll be the last time he'll see it for a while, and then, he's not sure why, presses it to his lips.

_Wait for me, John Watson._

He's not sure what it is. But it's not a request or a plea; he knows that much.

Sherlock Holmes doesn't let the things that are important to him get away without a fight.

* * *

The branches of Moriarty's web know _something _s happening, of course. They've watched cells fall, one by one, taken down by a nameless whisper in the night, and every single one is surely waiting for the nameless whisper to materialize on their doorstep, next.

So it's excruciatingly easy for Sherlock, red hair to his shoulders and brand new scars on display, to trip into the Chinese branch of the web, and wake up handcuffed in a rotting cellar, being informed that his face is soon to have a date with a tire iron if he doesn't talk.

All so excruciatingly easy.

All so... dull.

Even the tire iron is dull, after a time.

* * *

**March 31, 2013**

He enjoys the hospitality of the rotting cellar throughout the beginning and all the way to the end of the withdrawal. He still craves it, a little, but supposes having three fingers crushed and a wrist snapped clean in two and a face used as a punching bag, he can be forgiven for craving opioid painkillers. And there's information to be gathered, too- people tend to be _very _loose-lipped when they think they have a winning hand, flapping loose lips to the prisoner bleeding from the mouth and defeated, and Sherlock quietly records every name and note of importance.

China is not a country he wants to be stuck in for long. They have secret prisons here that even Mycroft's name can't open.

If Mycroft knew where he was. Which, he doesn't.

So Sherlock rides out the withdrawal, and he gathers information, and he doesn't read John's texts because he doesn't have his phone, and he waits. His interrogators grow bored, with his lax compliance and silence, and soon there's only one guard and they don't even bother to cuff him back to the wall when they're done.

He waits.

And when the guards change shift, Sherlock picks the lock, and headbutts the man who comes in with the drill bit, aiming to put a third scar next to his first two.

Another branch of the web falls.

Every ranking member is executed. It's what is required. Everyone who knows the name James Moriarty has to die, because everyone who knows the name knows of the hit or runs the serious risk of finding it, and the only way to keep his people safe is to end Moriarty's. Then, there are others- others who have _options. _Those he can hand over to the authorities, those that he can leave trussed up for Mycroft, those that he can scare so badly they're scared onto the straight and narrow.

Those he kills anyway, because they are just such _loathsome _collections of human being that they foul the air with every breath that they breathe.

He lets the one go.

The one with the newborn girl at home and dog hairs on his ankles, and can't possibly be more than sixteen, and has a tattoo of Moriarty's that he's ashamed of, and has never hit Sherlock with a tire iron. Drill bit. Hammer.

Sentiment, he supposes.

* * *

**(March 03, 2013)**

**John Watson: **Had a good day at work today. I miss our cases, though. I think I'm going to be proactive, for once. Last time I had such a stress-free life I pretty much fell apart. You remember, you were there. Molly offered to take me rock climbing. Godsend, Molly is. I think I'm going to go again.

**John Watson: **Maybe not with Molly, though. I know she's grieving, too, but something about the way the was looking at me- you'd know what was wrong, Sherlock. Whatever it is. I don't, but I really didn't like it, Sherlock.

**John Watson: **I miss you. Fuck.

**(March 10, 2013)**

**John Watson: **Molly insists to meet up with me for a weekly coffee, now. I think she just really wants to do something with me. I hope I'm not so oblivious that I don't recognize when I'm being flirted with? Lord knows you wouldn't be of any help here, Sherlock.

**John Watson:** I said yes. I know it's healthy for me, so. Might as well.

**John Watson: **She misses you too, you know.

(Sherlock, in that moment, resolves that he will never, ever make Molly Hooper get him a coffee ever again.)

**(March 17, 2013)**

**John Watson:** Fuck Sally Donovan.

**John Watson: **That's all.

**(March 24, 2013)**

**John Watson: **I'm never drinking again, that's for sure.

**John Watson: **You have the tolerance of a little girl, did I ever tell you how funny that was? You've given yourself sky high tolerance to any street drug I can think of, but you were always such a lightweight when it came to your liquor. I'm half your size and can drink more than you. You adorable tight arse.

**John Watson: **Okay, might still be a little drunk from last night.

**John Watson: **Okay, I am. Going back to bed. Good night, Sherlock.

* * *

His phone vibrates again, as Sherlock is icing the swelling in his face and busy bleeding onto a bed of plastic and concrete.

**John Watson: **I'm so fucking tired of people asking me how I feel about you being a fraud.

That's it.

There's no more message after that.

It seriously hurts his face to grin, and there's no around to fake it for, anyway, so Sherlock just settles back, passing his phone between two half-numb, half-screaming hands.

At first it really is just hysterically funny. That those utter _morons _really, actually fell for the lie- he's so extraordinary, so _good _at what he does, that it is inhuman; that it is easier for them all to believe all he does is a lie than accept the truth. If only they could see him now.

But then, he thinks about pulling on one of his tailored suits, again, ducking into his Belstaff and swooping down onto one of Lestrade's crime scenes, John at his heels and Baker Street at his back. He looks in the cracked mirror to see red hair and a hemorrhaged eye with burst blood vessels, and he tries to mentally piece it together; to go to that place in his mind palace and breathe in the Work.

_Fraud. _

Even someone as stupid as Sally Donovan will be able to see the lie.

* * *

**April 05 2013**

Sherlock leaves southwestern China with newly dyed hair- honey-brown, this time, and an itchy face. He walks with a limp, and every couple days, when he stops to sleep, has to kick the pillows and blankets to the floor; he's spent so long curled up on solid concrete he can't handle the softness of a bed.

* * *

**April 08 2013**

**Dr. Molly Hooper: **Wherever you are, promise me you'll eat, and sleep warm tonight

That night, he does.

* * *

**April 09 2013**

A tooth gets infected. A back-alley dentist pulls it. He's offered black-market vicodin, and it takes everything he has to say no.

Stupid, Sherlock. So, so stupid.

* * *

**April 17 2013**

**Anderson: **Im so sorry Sherlock

**Anderson: **Im so so sry

**Anderson: **Oh my god I killed you

**Anderson: **Im so sorry plz I didnt want thisofjwi to

**Anderson: **Sherlock I cant takdsieog anymore I didnt want this Sherlock

**Anderson: **fwejagiw;ahowajo;h

**Anderson: **gjio;sdgho;

**Anderson: **Sherlock Im so sorry

(Sherlock tilts his head in abject puzzlement, sitting on the floor of a smelly, filthy hostel, and blocks Anderson and his drunk texting with a swipe of his thumb.)

* * *

**April 20 2013**

**John Watson: **Can't sleep again

**John Watson: **I really need to stop thinking about it. I'm never going to get the answer I want, I don't understand how your brain works, it's not going to happen. I can't stop, though.

**John Watson: **Why did you jump, Sherlock?

(Sherlock was in a motel, that night. He breaks the lock to the roof, and spends it sitting on the edge, his legs dangling into the open air, smoking a cigarette until it is nothing but ash.)

* * *

**April 25 2013**

**John Watson: **I miss you

* * *

**April 29 2013**

**John Watson: **Passed a street musician today. Three guesses as to what he was playing. Yeah, I know don't need anymore than one.

**John Watson: **Would you believe that I actually miss getting woken up at four in the morning by that racket?

(Sherlock hasn't touched a violin in eight months. While he's busy worming his away across China, he halfway considers picking up an erhu, but his fingernails are only starting to grow back and his hand shakes as he mimes holding the bow.)

* * *

**May 05 2013**

**John Watson: **Had coffee with Molly this afternoon. Easily the most awkward lunch I've ever had in my life.

**John Watson: **I don't think she's sleeping well. There's something off about her. I don't know, Sherlock. She said she was sorry four times.

**John Watson: **I know you didn't love her, but all the same, I wish you were here. You'd be able to figure out was wrong. Although maybe not say it so bluntly to her face, yeah? :)

* * *

Northeastern China is as unpleasant as southwestern China. Sherlock badly wants to finish his business, here, and it's that desire that keep him off the drugs, targeting the spiders with a surgical precision and clipping the poisonous branches one by one.

His hands smell like gunpowder constantly, now, and more of him hurts than doesn't.

He wonders if Mycroft will throw a terrible fit, if he turns back to heroin, but that's more of a fantasy than a reality. London and Baker Street are so far away that that their reality has faded from his fingertips, and the room in his mind palace is kept locked and shut tight. He won't tear it down, not ever, but it's been weeks since he's allowed himself to open the door.

His phone's vibrations smell like London, and that's all it's safe to have.

He shaves his head again, and heads to Russia.

* * *

**June 09, 2013**

**DI Lestrade: **I've got a case down at the docks that's stumping me. Missing hands, and hanging upside down from the rafters like a bat. Sound interesting? We could use the help.

**DI Lestrade: **Oh god. I forgot. I can't believe I forgot. Sherlock

(By the amount of times Sherlock sees the next message be started and deleted, Lestrade's hands are shaking so badly he can barely hold his phone.)

In the end, all it amounts to is:

**DI Lestrade: **I'm so sorry

Sherlock wonders how Not Good it would be, for him to text back and tell him he knows who murdered his missing-hands-victim.

Doesn't dare, of course.

But he wonders. And, all morbid, all the way through, he smiles.

Sherlock reloads his rifle, and returns his focus to the scope.

* * *

**June 12, 2013**

**Handler Viper: **Where are you?

Mycroft-speak: _Where the fuck are you?_

Mycroft-speak: _I haven't heard from you in months._

Mycroft-speak: _Are you alive?_

It's as much concern as Mycroft can allow himself to show for him. Somewhere in his head, in his data files on Human Interaction, he's sure it's supposed to be touching.

Sherlock doesn't answer.

* * *

Sherlock starts using his mind palace on his 57th kill.

He's in the middle of bloody fucking Russia, hungover instead of high, and John's texts these days are forlorn and sad, and he just- he refuses it, now. He's recording every press of his trigger finger, every caved in skull, every crack of gunfire, every name and face, every body; each one has its own neat file in his palace, waiting for the day when MI6 will need the exhaustive report on this mission.

He's also starting to smell blood in his sleep and every car backfire wants to make him throw up, and he's really just quite _done with it._

He is, as diagnosed by three psychiatrists and one MI6 behavioral analyst, a high-functioning sociopath. He has a neurological defect, a severe difficultly in properly experiencing empathy, the ability to understand the feelings of others. He is not a machine without emotion, and he has no desire or compulsion to kill. He has never, contrary to popular belief, tortured any animals to death, and before his leap from St. Bart's, had only killed another human being once: on a case, with a knife in his gut and a second coming for his neck. Even bloody _Donovan _had admitted it was self-defense.

Now, his body count is higher than Donovan could've ever dreamed.

And he's just. Tired.

So he goes offline.

He can seal his awareness up, lock his consciousness in a room with Redbeard or John, leave the rest of him kneeling in shitty sniper's nests pulling the trigger over and over and over. It's not really ideal, no. The mind palace is a memory retrieval and storage technique, not a dissociation one, and Sherlock can already feel sensation and memory bleeding through when they're not meant to. Rooms are being painted dark without his consent, and sometimes he'll open a door and find himself somewhere entirely different than where he'd meant to go.

Once, he opens broad, double oak doors, stepping in from the outside, and blinks, and he's inside Moriarty's padded cell.

Sherlock throws himself back out, and doesn't re-enter it for the rest of the day.

"This isn't healthy, Sherlock," mind-palace John chides, in His Chair at Baker Street and warm and safe and familiar. He's wearing his doctor's coat and is armed with a stethoscope; his mind seems to think that he needs a doctor. "Sherlock. _Sherlock."_

"Au contraire, dear John." Redbeard is here, too, curling in his lap, and Sherlock buries his hands in the overlong, warm fur. "Is it healthy? No. It is _healthier _than the alternative, though?" He smiles, all teeth, but the look on John's face makes it want to fade into the ground. "I'll be quite honest, I do prefer cocaine to this. Maybe I'll give that another go."

"Is tonight a danger night, then?"

"Ah. My dear John," he sighs again. "Tonight is the 326th danger night in a row."

* * *

**June 15 2013**

He's still Tired.

He lets himself get captured again, just for the chance to go offline for even longer. His system doesn't need sleep, anymore, it needs a hard reset, so he lets himself get taken. Or makes that his plan, precisely two seconds after it becomes apparent he either lets himself get caught, or chews the cyanide pill stuck in one cheek.

He goes offline for the month, and while his teeth get kicked in and his back is whipped open to bleeding and his fingers broken, one by one, Sherlock sits in Baker Street with John and Mrs. Hudson and Redbeard, and blots the world away.

And when the world of his mind palace starts to crumble, because it is _not _a dissociation technique and he risks his entire construction by forcing it like it is, and John won't speak to him and Mrs. Hudson's gone away, Sherlock forces himself back out to start snapping necks.

He's still Tired.

Nothing's changed.

* * *

**July 17 2013**

On his stumbling, starved way back towards anything at all that could be remotely considered safety, a car backfires.

Sherlock comes to huddled around himself squeezed underneath a desk, his head buried in his knees, two hours later.

He hadn't meant to enter his mind palace, that time. It had taken him under without his consent, of its own accord.

Which is really the point of the matter- he's been using it _wrong, _and now it's getting _worse._

"So there'll be no more of that, then," he croaks, in a voice that hasn't done anything but scream in four weeks. It sounds positively broken and vile.

After that day, there is indeed no more of that.

* * *

**July 19 2013**

**Dr. Molly Hooper: **Promise me if you're hurt, you'll take it easy tonight.

(Sherlock sprains an ankle running from the KGB, and keeps on running.)

* * *

**July 21 2013**

**DI Lestrade: **Fucking damn it, Sherlock

**DI Lestrade: **I'm sorry. Okay? I said it. I'm sorry.

**DI Lestrade:** I knew it was never true. What Donovan and Anderson were saying about you. How could it have been? You were a genius. I've seen you high as a rocket on four days of no sleep, and you were STILL the smartest person in every room without it being a contest. I've never been able to keep up with you a single day in my life. Of course you weren't a fraud.

**DI Lestrade: **People have been coming out of the woodwork this whole time, you know. Old clients of yours who want to testify for what you did for them. Cases that you solved that you could not possibly have faked, that only you were able to solve because you were so bloody brilliant. Anderson's a wreck because of them. Donovan can't manage to listen every time another comes by and I'm this fucking close to transferring her out, Sherlock, I'm this close to wanting to never see her face again. And I never thought they were lies to begin with but I should've fought harder to say that. I should've stood up to the commissioner for you. Maybe if I had you wouldn't have jumped.

**DI Lestrade: **I still don't have an explanation for who the hell Moriarty was or where those records came of you paying him off. I don't need it. I'm with John, on this one. Even if I'll never know what happened, I still believe in you, Sherlock.

**DI Lestrade: **I wish it wasn't too late for a second chance.

(_Talk to your wife, because she's talking to a divorce attorney,_ Sherlock types, and it takes three tries to delete it.)

* * *

**July 22 2013**

**John Watson: **I'm getting the fuck out of London for two weeks. Anyone who noses into it will be told to bugger off, and that includes you and your deductions, Sherlock.

* * *

**July 24 2013**

**John Watson: **I meant what I said to you. Your grave. I don't know why you told me that you lied, and I don't care how many headlines I see that you're a fraud. I still believe in you, Sherlock. My therapist, ex-therapist, said I was in denial, but I'm not. I look at all you've done, everything you've ever said to me, and I know that the one lie you've told was when you told me it was all fake.

**John Watson: **There are still so many people that believe in you, Sherlock. Please, Sherlock, please. Come back.

(He's drunk again, Sherlock surmises, and toasts a glass of something close to paint thinner to John's shredded sobriety.)

* * *

**July 27 2013**

**John Watson: **Fuck you, Sherlock Holmes

**John Watson: **When the fuck did you ever care about your reputation? When did you ever give one single flying fuck about it? You hated GETTING a reputation, and now you suddenly want me to believe that just because a few stupid fucking newspapers think you're a fraud you hauled off over a building for it? You could've lain low until it all blew over, you're Sherlock Holmes, you can do ANYTHING, but instead you kill yourself and make me watch

**John Watson: **You KILLED YOURSELF, Sherlock, what the fuck is wrong with you

**John Watson: **You cock, you stupid, stupid cock

**John Watson: **I'm getting another drink and do you know why? You. You. It's all fucking you. I'm pouring it now and I'm going to toast it and say for Sherlock and I'm going to drink it and it's going to be your fault

**John Watson: **FUCK YOU SHERLOCK

(He's... really, really drunk, this time.

Sherlock's chest hurts.)

* * *

**August 01 2013**

**John Watson: **If I could go one day of my life without google thinking I want to see articles about the hat detective, that'd just be swell

* * *

**August 05 2013**

**John Watson: **Next reporter who calls asking for comment is getting chucked out a window.

**John Watson: **And the next person I hear talking about how you were a fraud is getting the bill for when I buy the entire liquor store.

**John Watson: **Hey Sherlock

**John Watson: **fuck you

(_John. John, stop drinking. John, what are you doing; John, what's wrong, John?)_

* * *

**August 10 2013**

**John Watson: **What do they even want me to say? You're my best friend, I loved you, you jumped off a building and cracked open your head right in front of me, you died, I didn't, the end. No amount of talking about it is going to make that better. No amount of talking about it will change it.

**John Watson: **Half of London thinks you manipulated poor old John Watson, the other half thinks we were partners in crime and shagging behind closed doors. You've never even wanted to shag anyone in your life, have you? I'm not bloody stupid, Sherlock, I might look it when standing next to you, but

**John Watson: **Yes, I'm drunk again, and I have no clue where I'm going with this. Sue me

**John Watson: **What's even the point in wondering? You're not here anymore

**John Watson: **Still not okay with that

**John Watson: **That's never going to be okay

**John Watson: **I'm going to bed before I throw my phone out the window

* * *

**August 11 2013**

**John Watson: **I miss you so badly, Sherlock.

* * *

**August 13 2013**

**John Watson: **Back to work. Back to London.

**John Watson: **I think that was the worst holiday of my life.

* * *

It only hits Sherlock two days later, as he's paying his way into a seat on a private plane for a trip overseas to the Americas.

The anniversary of his death.

That's something that matters to people, isn't it? Anniversaries. The 365th day to commemorate the event. Birthdays, weddings, deaths. They are momentous occasions for no reason beyond foolish sentiment.

Sherlock has now been on the run for just over a year. To John, he has been _dead, _for just over a year.

Sherlock's hands are clammy as he pulls out his fake passport, and his breaths are just a bit too quick in his chest to sustain.

* * *

He lands in Peru, and once again disappears.

* * *

**August 30 2013**

**[Unknown Number]: **Happy birthday, Mr. Holmes

(Sherlock gets the message three days late, after breaking out of a Brazilian prison. He detoxes in an abandoned drug den, of all places, letting the rats bite at his fingers and toes, and treats himself by stopping by a hospital to let a doctor give him a rabies shot and remove the stitches from his back.)

* * *

**September 25 2013**

Sherlock shags his way into a human trafficking ring, and when he cuts the throat of a man who just bought a twelve year old for them to share, he does so with pleasure.

That's a lie. He doesn't shag his way into the human trafficking ring.

There's lots of tongue-wrestling and fondling, always with absolutely consensual partners, but its all underneath MDMA and alcohol, and nobody remembers well enough to insist otherwise when Sherlock says the night before was fun, they should do it again sometime. And when it's all over, and he's standing in a pool of blood and about to vomit from withdrawal, mind-palace John holding his shoulders and telling him he did good, _you did so well, Sherlock, I'm proud of you,_ he wants to go home and doesn't know where that is.

Venezuelan police are historically and infamously corrupt, and MI6 doesn't have the first idea where he is. He takes the survivors home himself.

* * *

**October 01 2013**

**John Watson: **I saw Mrs. Hudson at the supermarket today

**John Watson: **By which I mean I caught a glimpse of her from behind, and had to leave my cart in the aisle and go sit outside and try not to have a panic attack.

**John Watson: **I've really screwed this one up, haven't I, Sherlock

**John Watson: **Oh god please tell me what to do

* * *

**October 05 2013**

**John Watson: **I really miss you

* * *

**October 13 2013**

**John Watson: **I went on a third date today. First time since you know when. Her name's Mary. But you're not good with names, sorry. She's a nurse at the clinic, loves cats, and is tougher than nails. I think I like her.

**John Watson: **She's never asked me about you, which probably helps.

(Sherlock has another drink of something that tastes like paint thinner.)

**(October 16 2013)**

**John Watson: **You know that you were my friend, right? That I actually genuinely liked you and wanted to help you and as infuriating as you were every day, you meant a lot to me and you gave me some of the best two years of my life.

**John Watson: **I know you once told me you considered me a friend, but I guess I'm not sure if you ever realized I considered you one, too. Well, I did.

**John Watson: **I've done loads of yelling and apologizing, but I've never thanked you, have I?

**John Watson: **Thank you, Sherlock.

(And Sherlock shakes and Sherlock sighs; he wants to murmur _Oh, John, you dreadful fool, you dreadful, dreadful fool, _because there are a dozen and one snipers around the world with John Watson's name on a bullet in their guns, and _Oh, John, lovely, dependable, foolish Jo-)_

_"¿Quien es John?"_

Sherlock starts.

_"¿Quien es John?"_

Sanity floods back in.

Ah.

The girl huddles across from him, arms wrapped around her little knees and bowl of rice hoarded to her chest as if it was precious as gold. He doesn't know her name; which is fitting, he supposes, because she doesn't know his. She's the last one left, that he saved from Venezuela. She says _home _is Panama. Panama is a long ways away from Venezuela, when you're Sherlock Holmes and your arm is broken and you've forgotten what it's like to not be in withdrawal.

She doesn't talk to him, very much. Sherlock doubts that she trusts him. He's never touched her, not except to carry her when they have to run and she could never, ever keep up. But he wonders, still, if she has the slightest conception that he's not going to hurt her.

Sherlock stays in motel rooms more often than the streets, for now, and he makes sure he eats at least once a day, so she'll eat, too. Mind palace John is proud, and his Baker Street room slowly starts to rebuild.

Beyond that, there's nothing to be done.

_"Sherlock," _John chides again, insistent in the back of his head, and he starts a second time.

Ah. Yes.

Right.

"John," he answers, arranging a smile for the girl, who is currently looking as if she regrets speaking up very much at all. He's getting better at that one, he thinks; he has a new smile filed away now, one reserved for upset children. Lestrade and John will both be so very proud. "_John es... bueno." _

It is, at its core, a dreadful answer.

_"Sherlock, do better," _John chides a third time.

Sherlock wants a needle in his arm.

_"John es... como familia." _

There, he thinks, dragging on an imaginary cigarette. There.

The girl doesn't say anything else for that night, but she does smile, just a little, and Sherlock supposes he can forgo the distraction of cocaine for another night.

* * *

**October 31 2013**

Sherlock wastes the last of his cash on a tourist resort in northern Colombia.

It's getting cold, again. And even if he can't relax on a soft bed, anymore, and throws all his pillows across the room and bites his fists to stop from screaming until he huddles in the bathtub until morning, it's easier than checking his companion for hypothermia until sunrise.

He leaves his phone charging with the girl in the room, orders her to stay, and heads out to commit arson.

Another branch of the web falls, and Sherlock comes back with several thousand peso notes in his pockets, a box of takeout under his arm, and his mind buzzed with his most pleasant high in ages.

* * *

**November 01 2013**

**John Watson: **I have an amazing job, amazing friends, am dating an amazing woman, and I'm miserable, Sherlock.

**John Watson: **I still want that miracle.

**John Watson: **Please just stop this, Sherlock. Please.

They check out at five in the morning. By check out, he really just means _leave. _He hasn't checked out of a hotel in years.

There's a piano in the lobby. And he's not high on anything but severe lack of sleep, but chemically, biologically, it amounts to little difference, and rather than leading the way outside he finds himself leading the way towards the piano, instead, and he sits down and for the first time in one year and five months, he plays.

He's not a pianist. He functionally understands it, and there is a keyboard in one of his mind palace's rooms for composing, but he's not a pianist. Pressing the keys feels like pulling the trigger, and his shoulders ache and the girl looks like she's about to cry.

_"I've really missed you playing," _mind-palace John says, warm and familiar. _"You should do it more, Sherlock; you like it."_

When his left thumb slips in its tremor and hits the wrong note, Sherlock has to stop, and he has to breathe so he doesn't scream.

_Oh god. Oh god. Oh god._

"Well," he murmurs to himself, and smiles. "We'll not be doing that again, will we?"

* * *

**November 06 2013**

He is hugged exactly twenty-one times, and kissed on the cheek exactly seven, when he knocks on a door in Panama and it opens to reveal a family.

Awilda, he learns. The name of the girl he's inadvertently saved is Awilda.

There's lots of sobbing and _gracias _and tears, but Sherlock only feels hollow as he shakes his head again and again, _no hay problema, _he insists, _no hay problema no hay problema. _It's really not. He was headed north anyway. It's rather more trouble to worm his way out of being asked to stay for dinner, to refusing the money and the diamond ring that's three generations old and worth more than their whole house that they try and hand him, to shake his head and smile and backpedal out the door before the pressure suffocates him.

They ask his name, and he says John.

_"Oh, Sherlock." _Mind palace John shakes his head, shakes and shakes and shakes, and he looks sincerely just disappointed. _"Don't give me credit for this. You did good today, Sherlock."_

"Be quiet, John," he murmurs.

Then, everyone's staring at him, and he realizes he said it out loud.

* * *

**November 17 2013**

**John Watson: **Mary finally brought you up today.

**John Watson: **I told her if she said you were a fraud, we were finished.

**John Watson: **She didn't, though.

**John Watson:** She just asked if I'd want to talk about you. Not just about stuff on the website, the stuff everyone knows, but you as my friend.

**John Watson: **I want to say it helped, but I'm also crying into my morning coffee and considering calling out from work, so

**John Watson: **I guess it's going to take longer than a year, huh.

* * *

**November 16 2013**

Sherlock tries what Mexico calls tea, and spits it right back into his cup.

Positively ghastly. He'll take the paint thinner, thank you.

* * *

**November 18 2013**

Sherlock takes out Moriarty's Mexican web as a sniper, hidden half a mile away in a nest in a bloody tree.

This branch is a little unusual, and requires extra handling; Sherlock stays in wait and in watch, watching through the scope to observe how events will unfold. He needs to see how the Mexican authorities will handle this case before choosing his own next move. If they will find the clues he left for them, or if he needs to leave another for this dull bunch of _morons_, or perhaps needs to go out of his way to finish the entire mission himself; it would certainly be faster, it would certainly go smoother...

As he watches, two newcomers arrive on scene.

A woman. Mid-thirties, married, a nurse, middle-class, didn't sleep the night before, skipped breakfast this morning and had coffee and eggs for lunch.

Her son. Seven or eight, currently in an expensive primary school, dedicated soccer player, studious, badly in need of glasses or contacts.

Both harried. Disheveled. Panicky. Upset.

When they catch sight at last of one of the bodies on the floor, Sherlock can see them screaming, crumpling, sobbing, from half a mile away.

The man he's killed is a foul collection of everything loathsome the world has to offer. He has ties to the human trafficking web from Venezuela, is deeply entrenched in a drug cartel that uses children as their mules, and just the night before, Sherlock's stakeout had observed him murdering an innocent civilian who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He would kill John, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade if given the opportunity. He has killed dozens just like them over the years, and in all the hours spent observing him, Sherlock has not seen the slightest hint of remorse. The world is a better place with him gone.

Sherlock slides out of his tree to land on shaky knees, and presses his fist to his mouth to hold back the urge to vomit.

* * *

**November 30 2013**

**John Watson: **Molly likes Mary. Greg likes Mary. Mary likes them back.

**John Watson: **I should be happy, shouldn't I? I like Mary, my friends like Mary; Mary likes me, Mary puts up with all my sulking, she's even gone with me to your grave. I am dating an amazing and patient woman. I should be happy.

**John Watson: **And all I can bloody think about is how much I want you here so you can tell me what kind of present would make her really, really happy for bloody Christmas.

**John Watson: **I'm not happy, Sherlock.

* * *

**December 11 2013**

**John Watson:** Assisted a friend today in trauma surgery. Guess I now have another activity that's scratched off the list of things I no loner want to have the stomach for.

**John Watson: **If you had to fucking jump, Sherlock, you know, you didn't have to do it in front of me.

(Sherlock considers it hilariously ironic that he actually spends the night jumping from rooftop to rooftop in Vegas. His ankle clicks, all the way from Israel, and mind palace John and Molly both tell him to knock it off.)

* * *

**December 22 2013**

**Handler Viper: **dacast.com/livestream/342bx980

**Handler Viper: **In exactly seventy two hours, if convenient

**Handler Viper: **Password: the opening three moves of our last chess game

**Handler Viper: **Context: a Christmas present from Dr. Molly Hooper

Ah. It's Christmas, again.

Mycroft does not text him anything else. From anyone else in the world, Sherlock knows, it would be a sign of annoyance.

It's a sign of Mycroft's concern.

Sherlock supposes he can indulge him, for the day. It is Christmas, after all.

Apparently.

* * *

**December 25 2013**

Sherlock lifts a laptop from a drug den, and because it's Christmas, doesn't even use.

He's in Oregon, now. A dreary, dreadful place, with rain that reminds him of London and snow that reminds him of Russia. There's twinkling lights all around town and Christmas music blasting with every corner that he turns.

It's positively hateful, and he gets a motel room as far on the outskirts of town as he can get.

And there, sitting on the ratty floor, wearing two coats against the heating that doesn't work and wedged against the corner because the mattress makes his back hurt, he pulls up the livestream.

Sherlock, admittedly, has no idea what to expect. Perhaps a Christmas message, from Mummy and Father. Really, he can't fathom what on earth Molly would send him as a Christmas present, and can't fathom beyond that what would require a livestream to do so. But, Mycroft has evidently found it worthy enough to pass on.

Despite having no expectations whatsoever, somehow, still, Sherlock manages to be surprised.

It's Baker Street.

It is a livestream of Baker Street.

Of Christmas. A Christmas party that he remembers from a lifetime ago, but the truth is, it is not a lifetime ago, but now instead just an ocean away. This is happening _now, _thousand of miles across the world all the way back into London. The music, the lights, the fire, the snow in the window outside. It is Baker Street, all put on just for him, with Molly there letting him watch through an MI6 camera on her glasses that she doesn't wear; that she has put on for his sake and his sake alone.

Of Mrs. Hudson, Lestrade, and- _John._

_John._

Sherlock reels as keenly as if he's been struck.

Perhaps, in a way, he _has. _

They're all alive.

They're _here._

The deductions hit him with such force that he's left breathless and rocking.

Mrs. Hudson has been working all day cooking. She saw her sister earlier. She's delighted to see Molly and Lestrade; she's not delighted to see John. Her Christmas present to Lestrade is the scarf he is currently wearing. Lestrade is in talks with a divorce attorney and though his soon to be ex-wife is scraping for pennies, he is relieved to be throwing in the proverbial towel. Lestrade is busy at work and scrounging for overtime; he worked this morning's shift despite it being the holidays, and he's set to work tomorrow morning. But he's very happy to be here; he's smiling at Molly and Mrs. Hudson, and John, of course, there's John, too-

_John._

John.

There are too many deductions to count.

John didn't sleep well the night before. He was nervous about coming here tonight. His jumper's worn a hole in the elbow, and it's not that he doesn't care, he doesn't notice, and that- well, that's worse. He's purposefully not drinking the same glass of wine everyone else has set before them, just water, and he can tell by his eyes he hasn't had a drink for at least several days. He feels guilty; won't meet Mrs. Hudson's eyes. He hasn't spoken to Lestrade in weeks. He's most comfortable around Molly, a familiarity that was not present before, a familiarity that speaks of weekly coffee dates and check-ins. He needs a haircut. He's not limping and his hand is steady, but his shoulder aches; the cold, it was always the cold. He's uncomfortable and unsure of his place but is happy, all the same, he _wants _to be there, here; he is alive, he is breathing, he is whole, he is-

"John!"

"Oh- Molly-"

"John," she says again, the words sunshine-bright and shining, "it's so good to see you, I'm so glad you make it-" and she hugs him without pretext, and-

Well, quite frankly, Sherlock could just kiss her.

There's no one there to kiss. Sherlock rather thinks he's going to cry, instead.

"It's... it's good to see you, too... Molly, we saw each other just Monday-" He laughs awkwardly, trying for a shadow of a smile. "What's going on?"

"Oh, it's just- I'm just so glad that you're here. That's all, John. I'm just so glad that you're here."

Sherlock concurs.

God, Sherlock concurs.

"And Inspector-" Molly shakes his hand warmly; by the look on Lestrade's face, the look on hers must be positively ecstatic. "I know you've got an early morning tomorrow; thank you so much for making the time anyway."

"Oh... oh, well- you know..." He flushes, a little, and is making a rather transparent effort to keep his eyes up rather than stare at her breasts, like last Christmas. Given the new lack of a wedding ring, he's not sure why he bothers. "Anything for... Mrs. Hudson."

He didn't mean Mrs. Hudson.

But, as if summoned by the mere vocalization of her name, his landlady appears next, striding in to give everyone in sight the tightest hugs in existence. "Molly, Molly," she's saying, already wiping at her eyes, "I've missed you, dear- you're wearing glasses, is that new? So good to see you..."

"Just trying something new, Mrs. Hudson," and Sherlock adds another item on the list of things that he now owes Dr. Molly Hooper.

They're all sat down, soon. For Christmas dinner and the casual exchange of casual presents and forced conversation of the type that speaks of old friends struggling to maintain a connection that they have let slide. A small talk that would've been positively hateful before, but now Sherlock can't bring himself to mind at all.

Molly sits across from John. God bless Molly.

It is clear, again, that none of the group rightly knows how to go from here. The web forms in Sherlock's mind, overlaying atop Moriarty's; without a consultant to beg for help from, Lestrade will not have need to speak to John or stop by Baker Street, and likely has not properly spoken to them in months. John has moved out of Baker Street, and confesses to Sherlock's phone that he has been avoiding Mrs. Hudson; they have not seen each other recently either. Molly is the only thread holding the three together, and even that is barely- he can see how it frays, how it pulls taut and trembles, how it is plucked like a violin string until it snaps.

Molly is trying. For him, doubtlessly. Molly has called this dinner and called them all here tonight, and she refuses to let the silence lie- all for him.

All for him to have a happy Christmas.

It feels like something is crushing down on him from every side.

Sherlock focuses, anyway. Through withdrawal and starvation and sleep deprivation, he focuses. He listens. And when the emptiness in his head starts to howl, he does more than that; he turns his overactive brain to good use, and he re-creates the dinner from two years ago right in front of him.

He sees himself, there. Two years ago, John had been sitting next to his girlfriend, with Sherlock across from him; now, there is no boring teacher, so Sherlock sees himself in her place, instead. He sees himself pouring a glass of wine, and- yes, fine, he is hardly adept at small talk, either, but surely- he could... he could ask Mrs. Hudson about the banker she's seeing that she thinks she's keeping secret, he could tell Lestrade to get off his arse and ask out the secretary he fancies, and John, well. John.

Yes.

John.

But Sherlock blinks, and, Christ, he's crawling out of his bloody _skin._

The warmth and familiarity of expensive dress shirt cotton scrapes against scars and blisters and a burn on his collarbone, making him itch all over like he's covered in ants and there are spider eggs inside his skull. The wine tastes like water in his throat, barely acknowledged by neurotransmitters that have become accustomed to so much _more. _Yet his hand still shakes as he picks it up to drink, and he tries, dear god, he _tries; _he closes his eyes and presses his hands to his ears and he breathes against sensory overload, but gunfire cracks in his head and even before he opens his eyes he sees them dead and bleeding and gone.

He sees Mrs. Hudson shying away, quietly murmuring _Sherlock, dear, perhaps you need to look into another place to stay, _because she'll put up with his racket, his tantrums, his experiments, his rudeness, his shooting up the walls, but now everything is so much _worse _and it's out of his power to stop it. He sees Lestrade blocking his number because he's lost _it, _what makes him tick; because now when he looks at a crime scene and sees the killer the instinct is ingrained in him to load his rifle, and call the police to collect the body. And that's if he can even show up sober to the crime scene at all; Lestrade has a rule, Lestrade says _I won't give your a case if you're using again, Sherlock, _and Sherlock is most definitively using again.

He looks at John, and John looks at him, and John _sees _him.

Sees him for all that he is. All that he has done in the past two years, and all that he has done _to _him, and all that he is incapable of making right.

He sees John look at him in open, naked disgust, and- he leaves.

He turns his back and he leaves.

The illusion splinters, bleeding with acid across the cracks, and something _screams._

_"John,"_ he chokes, and the precious, newly constructed south wing of his mind palace solidifies around him.

The south wing looks like Baker Street, and John is waiting in His Chair.

It makes everything about him splinter and fall twice the worse.

"You're having a panic attack," John tells him, matter-of-factly, as if there is nothing abnormal or strange about _Christmas dinner _knocking his knees out from under him to bring the end of the world. "Sherlock, breathe."

"I _am," _he snarls, except, he's not. He exists in two places at once, whole and hale here in his palace, here with John, and then on his knees on a filthy hotel room, and there Sherlock can feel suffocation squeezing his chest in half because he's _not_. Not breathing. Not hanging on. Not _surviving. _Oh, god, he's not going to make it- "John-"

"A sense of impending doom is one of the symptoms," he soothes, in a way that reminds him of Redbeard. He gets on his knees in front of him; solid, existential, _real. _"Sherlock, what is the worst case scenario? How is the worst this can end?"

_1) You die, Lestrade dies, Mrs. Hudson dies_

_2) You don't forgive me_

_3) You try to forgive me but can't_

_4) You hate me_

_5) You forgive me then find out all I've done and hate me anyway_

_6) I die_

_"Sherlock." _

"I pass out and wake up tomorrow morning sore and exhausted," and he _hates himself, _but it's true. "I make a fool out of myself and get sick over my own stress. Then I get up and go on tomorrow's stakeout."

And mind-palace John smiles at him, not leaving his chair because that's where Sherlock wants to see him. He says, "Good boy,", like he's a dog, and Sherlock is halfway to melting and halfway to screaming and currently doesn't care which is which.

"There you go, then, Sherlock. No stakes at all, you see? So why don't you breathe for us, huh? Slow, in through your nose, out through your mouth- and again. There it is. There you go. You're doing good, Sherlock."

"Oh, _piss off, _John," he croaks, miserably and heaving, head in his hands, but John knows he doesn't want him to go, and he doesn't.

John appears next to him instead, stroking his hair in a way his mind knows is calming, and Sherlock thinks for a moment that as dreadful as he feels, he'll gladly volunteer to feel this way for the very rest of his life, if it means John doesn't go.

The screeching wails about him begin to slow, and with them, the trembling of his mind palace's walls fades. He's still choking, worn, exhausted, sick, dying, scraped raw, dead, but on his hands and knees with a pulsing head, and he wants to sob instead of scream.

The panic attack passes.

Sherlock feels no better.

"-in- breathe out... breathe in- breathe-"

"What just happened?"

John's stupid, ceaseless instructions stop. The hand in his hair cards to a halt.

"What's _happening to me,_" he spits again, and for a half-second wants to tear the entire wing to the ground. "John, what-"

"You know already, Sherlock."

"No, I _don't!" _And Sherlock is still on his hands and knees, now, but he throws John off, scrambling away to crawl for his own chair instead. Constancy, familiarity, a home that is burned to ash. "I'm _Sherlock Holmes, _I don't get- _panic attacks, _you-"

"You are Sherlock Holmes. You are, perhaps regrettably, human. You experienced a human, biological reaction, a dysfunction, of extreme stress. So, Sherlock Holmes, either you are not human, or, you get panic attacks." John takes a moment for a half-smile, and he re-forms in his chair, because it makes the knot in his stomach a little lighter. "And I know you like to pretend you're not human, but I think that we both know that you bleed when you're cut, and you cry when you're hurt. Just the same as me."

Sherlock hasn't done much bleeding, lately. He doesn't think. He remembers all the lives he's executed so much more cleanly, than he can recall every misstep of his own. He's deleted every misstep with ease, but his kills- they won't be deleted.

_(someday we're going to be standing around a body, and Sherlock Holmes'll be the one who put it there)_

_(you're a great man, Sherlock, but someday, I think you could be a good one, too)_

_(Sherlock)_

"I don't- don't _understand," _he snarls, finally; waves a hand, physically brushing aside the blood and bits of bone and brain and caved in skulls away to another room. Grits his teeth, breathes through his nose, closes his eyes to the pulsing, hard beat of his heart. "Why over _this? _I'd- I'd understand a reaction to physical trauma, or extreme fear, but- _it's fucking Christmas dinner, John!" _

It's a fucking Christmas dinner, and it has reduced him to _bawling like a baby _in his own head.

He has never in his life felt so wholly, pathetically, vulnerably, stupidly, _agonizingly _human.

"Sherlock," John says, quietly again.

Because this John, the one in his head, knows he knows. This John wants him to have to face it, say it out loud, because, just as John would agree, it's best not to run from incontrovertible truth.

He doesn't need John to tell him what he already knows.

The reason that dinner has so utterly, totally eviscerated him is because he looks at it, and sees, just a year ago, a place where Sherlock Holmes would've sat down and _fit, _just so.

And he sees that same place this time, and he sees himself in the mirror-

all jagged edges, all scraped and broken glass, his curls shaved and his stubble bleached blond, thinner and scarred and bloody and torn and-

-he doesn't fit into Sherlock Holmes anymore.

* * *

**December 28 2013**

Sherlock sends Molly a bouquet of red roses with Mycroft's credit card number.

He gets no reply- not from Molly or from Mycroft- but he knows both his messages are received.

* * *

**January 09 2014**

**John Watson: **I broke up with Mary today.

**John Watson: **She's a really, really wonderful person, and I really hope we're going to stay friends, but after how bad of a boyfriend I've been I'll understand if she doesn't want to. Maybe if I'd met her three years ago or three years from now, it'd be different.

**John Watson: **But it's not fair to her to do this while I'm still hung up over you.

**John Watson: **Sherlock bloody Holmes, you're ruining my life from beyond the grave, and the messed up thing is I'd give anything to have you still ruining my life as long as you did it from Baker Street.

* * *

**January 10 2014**

Sherlock gets falling down drunk in Tennessee, and that night, sleeps in a ditch on the side of the road.

He wakes with the taste of vomit in his mouth, and his phone vibrating in his pocket again.

For the first time in two years, he turns it off, and it's not to conserve the battery.

* * *

**February 15 2014**

For two years, Sherlock has planned his every move five stops ahead.

It's just necessary, when he's a solo agent against the entire rest of the world. Moriarty's ever dwindling web has a blackboard dedicated to it in his head, one that's rolled to one of the forefront rooms of his mind palace, and with every country he steps foot into he knows the path that will carry him through the next five. He has his plan and seven contingencies, each and every one mapped out in so much detail even Mycroft would be satisfied. It isn't even _hard- _each plan comes to him fully formed, the pieces already settled into place, clicked together along a glowing red line, following rock-solid logical reasoning that forms even faster than he can think it through himself.

So Sherlock steps into Canada, and again, he thinks five steps ahead.

And for the first time in two years, rams straight into a solid brick wall.

There's no fifth step.

There's no fifth step.

There's no-

Ah.

Moriarty's web has dwindled, and dwindled, and now-

Now there is no longer any fifth branch, and so, no fifth step.

_Ah._

* * *

Sherlock composes half a dozen texts to his brother, and deletes every one before it's sent.

Something in his head has been snapped too severely for the jagged edges to understand concepts like safety, home, an _end, _and he spends the night with a needle of heroin stuck straight into his arm.

The events of the past two years obviously beg to differ, but honestly, Sherlock doesn't even like heroin.

* * *

**February 21 2014**

**Agent Lazarus: **It's time for the Richard Brooke/M evidence to come to light.

(It's three in the morning in London. Mycroft starts typing a response in exactly fifteen seconds.)

**Handler Viper: **Consider it done.

**Handler Viper: **Will you be requiring an extraction?

(...)

**Handler Viper: **I need an answer to that question.

**Agent Lazarus: **Don't go off starting any wars.

* * *

(Translation:

_Yes, because I don't know how to come home.)_

* * *

**March 02 2014**

South Africa.

Sherlock breaks up another human trafficking ring, and takes clean, crisp pictures of all the evidence before he sets the building on fire. The smoke clears his head a little, somehow, even as it scalds his skin and waters his eyes as he lingers in the angry heat. _Fuck, _he thinks, rather bizarrely, and has to laugh into his fist just so he won't cough. He doesn't like heroin, and he doesn't like smoking. Someone should really get on inventing a substance for him to abuse that _doesn't _make him feel like shit.

* * *

**March 05 2014**

**John Watson: **Mary is still a godsend, did you know that?

**John Watson: **It helps so much to have someone to talk about it to. Someone who wasn't involved, you know?

**John Watson: **Because Greg feels so damn guilty, and there's still something that's just off about Molly, I don't know, and just about everyone else always wants to hear about the hat detective, but Mary just lets me talk about you. Even though I broke up with her.

**John Watson: **I suppose that's what therapists are for, but I tried three, and they all thought you were a fucking fraud. So Mary it is.

**John Watson: **Sorry.

**John Watson: **What I'm trying to say is, I feel a little better, today.

* * *

**March 18 2014**

Sherlock stays in South Africa until the bruises of the track marks have entirely faded. Then, he treats himself for another flight: this one, to Croatia.

It gets a little harder to breathe, and in answer to the tightness of his chest, Sherlock traces a finger down the list of texts. Hundreds, now. Hundreds of unreplied to texts, piling up in his phone like grains of sand; piling up to no end and no answer.

He starts to text a reply seven times.

_John_

_John, I'm clean now, I swear_

_I am so sorry, I didn't realize I'd hurt you_

_Please listen to what I have to say_

_Baker Street. Come if convenient. If inconvenient, come anyway._

_It's been dangerous_

_John_

In the end, he deletes them all.

He doesn't know what to say.

* * *

**April 02 2014**

**John Watson: **Told Greg to buck up and quit sulking today. Seriously, he's been sulking for two years and it's getting embarrassing. Yeah, I'm aware of the hypocrisy.

**John Watson: **I'm probably always going to be a little mad, but what's done is done. He got you clean and sober, and probably saved your life a dozen times before I ever met you. I can't really blame him being a pawn in Moriarty's scheme when you had me as a pawn in yours just as easily.

**John Watson: **He doesn't really understand why you jumped, either

**John Watson: **But I think if either of us ever want to get any sleep at night again, we're going to have to stop torturing ourselves about that question.

(Sherlock toasts both of the bloody idiots with a shot of whiskey. Then he forgets to sleep again, and only remembers because mind-palace Molly whacks him over the head with the dangers of three days without sleep, and mind-palace John all but throws him into bed, and mind-palace Lestrade tells him he won't get another case until he pulls himself the hell back together.)

* * *

**April 25 2014**

Sherlock turns down a so-grateful-he-was-sobbing diplomat's offer of a flight out of Croatia, and hitches a ride in a cargo truck back to Greece instead.

Like the good old days, he maintains to himself. Just taking the scenic route like the good old days. He doesn't like all the flights he's been taking, lately, anyway- leaves him indebted, with favors to pay back instead of cash in, a trail of evidence to mind... the more people that get involved, the more dangerous it is, and Sherlock really just sleeps easier when he's working alone.

Also, his left leg was snapped in Croatia, and he could use the weeks it'll take him to drive it to heal.

("Can't believe I'm living to see the day! Sherlock Holmes, accepting bed rest! _Sherlock Holmes! _Can't believe it; I honestly can't!"

"Shut up, John," Sherlock murmurs from His Chair, and continues to scratch Redbeard around the ears.)

* * *

**April 26 2014**

**John Watson: **Well that was the longest day of my life

**John Watson: **Sherlock, if I asked you to burn all the paperwork in the world for me, would you do it?

* * *

**April 30 2014**

**John Watson: **I'd kill for your mental map of London.

**John Watson: **Sherlock, I'm bloody LOST, what is Exeter Rd and how do I get back my flat from it? I was only walking for ten minutes, I am NOT hiring a cab

* * *

**May 02 2014**

**John Watson: **Mrs. Hudson is furious. She also says she forgives me.

**John Watson: **Maybe I don't deserve it, but neither of us wants to lose another friend.

("Good job, John," Sherlock murmurs, and John looks at him as if he's just sprouted a second head.

"_I'm _in _your _mind palace. Isn't my function to be egging _you _on, not the other way around?"

"Hush, John.")

* * *

**May 11 2014**

**John Watson: **Just pulled a 36 hour shift. There was a building collapse downtown. Bloody awful. Lots of injuries.

**John Watson: **How the hell did you never sleep and can you pls give me your secret rn

**John Watson: **k gododnight

* * *

**Agent Lazarus: **Send a car to make sure the good doctor gets home tonight.

**Handler Viper: **Focus on your mission, not your phone.

**Handler Viper: **Consider it done.

* * *

**May 23 2014**

**John Watson: **Trying something new. It's called being a functioning human being going to work and not feeling like shit at least one day out of the week.

**John Watson: **I'm serious, by the way, I know that sounds sarcastic, but I'm serious. I told Greg moping wasn't going to solve anything, and it's not. So I'm going to try and stop doing that.

**John Watson: **We'll see how it goes.

* * *

**May 26 2014**

Sherlock limps into Greece.

His leg clicks like his ankle now, and he tunes it out with a simulation of just how _much _Mycroft is going to bitch, when he realizes what he's done to himself.

He actually rather likes Greek- it's one of his favorite languages, and is certainly his favorite to write- but something about it pisses him off today and he makes a point to order his coffee in broken Greek accented English, playing the part of a bumbling tourist. And his leg still isn't one hundred percent, so rather than limp after to the north with his eyes on a terrorist cell, he limps down the street, instead, to stretch out on the beach and warm his insides with a whiskey.

It takes him ten seconds to realize he's being stared at, and ten minutes to realize it's the scars.

He puts his shirt back on, after that.

The shortness of breath is back. It's moved permanently into his chest, at this point, and Sherlock no longer has any idea how to evict it.

* * *

**May 31 2014**

_Breaking News: Hat Detective Vindicated _

_SHERLOCK HOLMES INNOCENT_

_Scotland Yard Issues Official Apology_

_#JusticeforSherlockHolmes_

_Genius Detective: Genius After All_

_Sherlock Holmes Cleared of All Charges_

_Justice Two Years Late_

The headlines swirl around him. A message from Mycroft buzzes in his pocket.

Sherlock smiles to the newspaper boy, tipping his hat, and keeps on walking.

* * *

**June 06 2014**

He limps from Greece in a blaze of what John would record in his blog as glory, what Mycroft would term as silly dramatics, and what the Greek police report will state as a fire of an undetermined source.

He can't breathe.

He can't breathe.

He can't-

* * *

**June 11 2014**

**John Watson: **Okay. I've been thinking about how to do this for a while, and I think I just have to say it.

_(John. John?)_

**John Watson: **Sherlock. Thank you, so much, for helping me. I am so sorry I wasn't able to help you. Not in return, but just because you were my best friend, and if you needed help, I should've been able to give it, no matter what.

**John Watson:** I love you, Sherlock. It doesn't matter in what way, because you're dead, and you're not coming back. I love you, and you're dead.

_(John, what--)_

**John Watson: **I've been a mess for two years, and I think I'm going to keep being a mess for a while. And no matter what, I'm never going to stop believing in you, and I'm never going to forget you. You deserve more than that. You deserve so much more than what you got, but I can at least give you that much.

**John Watson: **But I also need to move on, Sherlock.

_(J- John-)_

**John Watson: **You're not coming back. And I need to accept that, if I want to get my life back together.

**John Watson: **So, this is the last time I'll be texting you.

**John Watson: **Wherever you are, Sherlock, I hope you found peace. I love you, and I'm sorry I couldn't help you.

**John Watson: **Goodbye, Sherlock.

_(-can't breathe, I can't breathe, I can't breathe, I-)_

* * *

John has just settled back on his couch, curling up for a night of crap telly and hopefully peaceful dreams, when his phone buzzes by his side.

He checks it.

And chokes halfway to a bloody heart attack.

* * *

**[Unknown Number]: **I'm coming home, John. -SH

_(And a world away, Sherlock hops the fence into Serbia.)_

**Author's Note:**

> Bonus: I got drunk, to write some of John's drunk texting. You can see a lil clip of my shenanigans [here](https://ranowa-fanart-dump.tumblr.com/post/187014893616/not-quite-my-usual-just-bonus-fun-i-got-drunk-in#notes). Drink responsibly, kids!
> 
> Thanks so much for reading this monster! As always, feedback is always appreciated and welcome!


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